Here are my observations on a few items in the news.

HERE’S A MELANIA TRUMP SHOE STORY you most likely haven’t heard, because it took place out of the media’s view.  It reflects on her kindness and concern for the people in hurricane-ravaged Florida.

If it wasn’t for the mention in Peggy Noonan’s Saturday Wall Street Journal column, I wouldn’t have heard about it either. “How are you doing?” a concerned Melania asked an exhausted woman sitting on a shelter cot surrounded by stressed children. Just realizing that she was speaking to the First Lady, the woman, a bit flustered, said, “Well – hurricane,” Noonan wrote.

“Those are nice shoes,” she remarked of Melania’s flat ankle-boots, made of the finest leather. “Thank you,” Melania said, noting the woman’s soggy sneakers, “What size do you wear?” “Oh, 9,” she answered. With that, Melania removed her boots and put them on the woman’s feet to her delight and while softly telling her kids, “These are the First Lady’s shoes.”

Meanwhile, Melania took from her bag a pair of white sneakers and put them on, saying, “Oh good, these are so comfortable.”

A special thank you to Peggy Noonan for mentioning that meeting that took place away from media cameras in her column.

PAYING TO SEE A LOSER – I understand they began lining up at 5 a.m. to meet Hillary Clinton and purchase her book, “What Happened,” in New York at noon on Saturday. Why? They know what happened. At select sites, individuals are paying $3,000 to be photographed with the Democrat loser.

New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor, appearing on MSNBC, said she knows “sources” who are still in therapy because Hillary was defeated by Donald Trump. With no explanation as to what type of therapy, Alcindor said Clinton’s book is meant to be a way for the former First Lady and supporters (the media) to vent about Trump’s victory and help those still in therapy. Sad, isn’t it?

ONE FOR MY “POCKET PROTECTOR” FRIENDS, and others who remember the days of vacuum tubes. With the introduction of the Apple iPhone X this week, came some interesting facts from Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Bradford-delong.com.

“The transistors in an iPhone X would, back in the late 1950s, implemented in vacuum tubes, have: cost $150 trillion of today’s dollars; taken up 100 billion square meters of floor space (that is a hundred-story building, 300 meters high and 3 kilometers long and wide); and drawn 150 terawatts of power (that’s 30 times the world’s generating capacity). The piece made no reference to a comparison of speed.

While Apple expects to produce 40 million iPhone X models before the end of 2017, it will not meet consumer requirements.

I won’t be purchasing one. My iPhone 7 has more capability than I will ever use.

“RENEWABLES ARE EXPANDING … but still not enough to meet climate goals,“ writes Emma Foehringer Merchant in greentechmedia.com. “Wind, solar, and storage are increasingly looking to renewable technologies as a safe bet,” she says, “One hitch, though: That renewable future still won’t mean the globe reaches its climate goals.”

Moody’s Investors Service confirms that “the electricity industry doesn’t appear to move the needle fast enough on the Paris climate agreement, and suggests that the U.S. exit from the Paris accord will not have a significant negative effect on global emissions.

The energy consulting firm DNV GL predicts that oil and gas will become the world’s largest energy source in 2034, but solar, hydropower, and offshore wind will account for 85 percent of global electricity by 2050.

 Meanwhile, despite billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the U.S. solar industry, two companies are asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to impose tariffs on foreign-made crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, according to The Wall Street Journal.

 REFRESHING BERNIE’S MEMORY – Bernie Sanders, the Socialist who ran for president as a Democrat, claiming health care is a right, hasn’t given up on a single-payer healthcare system. Thirty years ago, Sanders said, “If we expanded Medicaid to everybody, we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.”

During his presidential campaign, he proposed a plan that would have cost $32 trillion over a decade. Last week he introduced his “Medicare for All” plan that, hopefully, will go nowhere.

Politifact took a look at the numbers in Sanders new plan. Those making $200,000, roughly the top five percent of income earners, would contribute $117 billion to a single-payer system, while everyone else would put in $126 billion. Payroll taxes would yield an additional $432 billion for a total of $675 billion. One problem – that’s $599 billion short of what the country spent on health care in 2013, according to CMM.